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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679019">bite your tongue (and choke yourself to sleep)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurenX/pseuds/Ella%20Symphony'>Ella Symphony (LaurenX)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Given (Anime), Given (Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Birthday Shizu, Hurt No Comfort, I mean, I'm sorry I'm making you suffer, M/M, Mild Blood, Mostly Canon Compliant, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unrequited Love, it's hanahaki, mentions of vomiting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:27:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679019</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurenX/pseuds/Ella%20Symphony</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There was blood on his teeth, and a garden of words growing in his throat, and there was nothing he knew but the shadowy nook where he longed for the sun.</p><p>(Or, if love is drowning, then Shizu is a sailor lost at sea.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kashima Hiiragi/Yagi Shizusumi, Kashima Hiiragi/Yoshida Yuuki, Satou Mafuyu/Uenoyama Ritsuka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>bite your tongue (and choke yourself to sleep)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This has been sitting in my docs for the better part of two months and my girlfriend has been encouraging me to post it for approximately all of that, so here it is!!! Happy birthday, Shizu! I swear I love him, even if I'm torturing him on his birthday<br/>Warnings for blood and all the nice things that come with Hanahaki!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was blood on his tongue, yellow petals stuck on his molars, sweat on his skin, and the sun's glare on his face.</p><p>There was no sun here, of course; only a star, golden hair turned violet and azure by turns, and then green and stoplight red in the blinking of the lights. There was a brilliant smile, sharp as it was dazzling, and there was a tickle in the back of his throat, an insistent burn that told him he'd be puking all night the minute he got home.</p><p>There was blood on his teeth, and a garden of words growing in his throat, and there was nothing he knew but the shadowy nook where he longed for the sun.</p><p> </p><p>The first time he coughs flowers into his hands and chokes on the tickle in the back of his throat, he's 13 and Hiiragi is looking at Yuki like he hung the moon and the stars. Shizusumi's standing in the balcony, looking down at his two friends, and then he's sitting on the floor, coughing and coughing and feeling the burn.</p><p>They're pale, yellow little things, clumped together with spit and dyed a soft pink by the iron starting to seep into his tongue. His chest constricts, confusion and panic, because he knows the taste of iron well, but he never knew flowers tasted like death.</p><p>According to the internet, they're yellow tulips. According to the language of flowers, they mean a ton of things.</p><p>Shizu throws them all away except for one, which he washes clean of blood and lets dry under a paper weight. He turns it over in his hand that night, long after his friends have trickled in and out of his house, Yuki with his saccharine confidence and Hiiragi with his bright grins and Mafuyu with his silent kindness.</p><p>It's light and frail, this tiny thing that will kill him, already curling at the edges with abuse, already ready to wither away. <em> Hopeless love, </em> it means. <em> Unrequited </em>love. A confirmation of the futility of his desires, the damnation of this twisted love of his.</p><p>Brightness, too, and sunshine. It's laughable, how perfect the flower is, how perfect <em>Hiiragi</em> is. He wants to defile that, wants to gnaw at his lips until all Hiiragi knows is the taste of Shizu and blood, wants to hear whatever sinful sounds that miraculous voice of his can produce, wants to steal the breath from his lungs and every single word from his mouth.</p><p>He wants to carve Hiiragi open and hollow him out, take it all for himself and bathe in the light of his ribs, the gold in his left valve. He wants to trace his spine, to touch his lungs, to hear all the secrets in his throat. He wants and wants and <em> wants</em>, and he pukes up flower petals into his toilet and pants as red drips from his mouth, and he knows wanting will kill him before the stems growing in his lungs do.</p><p>He doesn't keep them, doesn't keep any but the first petal, bruised and broken, because Hiiragi's heart is too big and he deserves better than bleeding over jars of petals when Shizusumi's gone. He knows the odds, the treatments, the solutions and the so-called cures. Between death or oblivion, Shizu's never much liked either, but between the world and Hiiragi, he'll always choose the one who shines the brightest.</p><p>(The stars never held a candle to him.)</p><p> </p><p>It's 2 AM and Hiiragi's 14 while he's barely even halfway there, might not even make it, trying to muffle the retching with his palm as he lays in bed, but love is more poisonous than snakes and it moves fast, too fast. The crimson wriggles through his fingers, down his hands and wrists, comes to a stop in the crook of his elbow, and the yellow petals follow down peacefully, not a care in the world and delicate as ever.</p><p>They were pretty lovely for a lethal reminder that Hiiragi wanted to kiss a boy, and it wasn't him.</p><p>He <em>does</em> make it to fourteen, though he carries tissues everywhere and finishes a box in a week, five days, three. It's getting hard, hiding the flowers growing in his chest cavity, because he spends half the day coughing into his fist and carefully dropping petals behind his back when they turn their heads, swallowing the sharp tang of rust and telling himself it doesn't taste of rot and decay.</p><p>His lungs are deteriorating and life expediency seems to change by the day, his existence a game of Russian roulette where Hiiragi is the bullet, Shizu's love the gun, and his steadfast indulgence in pain, the finger pulling the trigger. He doesn't even hesitate to hear the bang anymore, all too happy to spend the day washing down blood with tea that tastes worse than the leaves that have started coming with the flowers so long as he can see Hiiragi smile and feel his exquisite warmth as he leans into his side. Hiiragi's body heat is low, lessens with every year that goes by, but these days, Shizu is freezing cold every single minute of the day and even Hiiragi's clammy skin feels like a stove to him. It isn't good.</p><p>It's the best thing Shizu has ever felt.</p><p>(His ribs ache something fierce, roots growing like a disease, and Shizu is telling the truth for the first time in forever when he tells the doctor that death is the only option he ever had.)</p><p> </p><p>Kashima Hiiragi loves Yagi Shizusumi. This is a fact. It is as real as the tears in his eyes when Mafuyu left, the sobs in his throat when Yuki was lowered into the ground, the void in his chest when all he had to hold onto was a cold back and shoulders that were too wide upon sight and yet too frail upon touch.</p><p>It is indisputable, like the blue of the sky reflected back in golden eyes, and a grin with deadly canines whispering all of Shizusumi's desires, of all the bloody and dirty things he wants. And as real as the flower he hacked up when Hiiragi's back was turned, a young bud that was terrifyingly whole. Time was running out. The earth was calling, dark and moist and lonely.</p><p>Hiiragi was calling, giving Shizu the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen, and it was always so easy to follow the beacon of hope and divinity held in Hiiragi's warmth and ignore the comforting call of the soil.</p><p>He'd much rather take a supernova to a black hole.</p><p>Kashima Hiiragi loves Yagi Shizusumi. This is a fact.</p><p>But Kashima Hiiragi loved the dead more than he did the living, and had loved pain more than he ever did comfort for as long as he'd known the word "ruin."</p><p>He wore it well, after all. Shizu loved him better without scars and without growing pains, without tears and without pleas he was not in the right to answer to. But Hiiragi had always loved best in melancholy, playing surgeon with his heart just as he played executioner with his smiles.</p><p>Kashima Hiiragi loved Yagi Shizusumi. That is a fact.</p><p>Kashima Hiiragi was in love with Yoshida Yuki. That is all.</p><p>The rest is a pile of yellow petals in the snow.</p><p> </p><p>They're fifteen and Yuki's gone, and Hiiragi is in shambles but he gets back up and does something with all his broken pieces because he's the sun, and the sun doesn't ever go down easy.</p><p>Instead of crashing and burning, going out in a violent, oh so delightful blaze of glory, Hiiragi locks himself in his room for a week straight and doesn't come out once, no matter how many times Shizu calls or begs. He's growing desperate, more blood than petals splattered on the sink when he brushes his teeth, red marks on every mug when he drinks the disgusting tea, and it makes everything worse. He's used to Hiiragi's warmth stuck to his side, his hands always touching, his hair always tickling. Hiiragi being by his side is the one lifeline he's ever had, the one thing keeping him from drowning in all the memories and the scars. It's killing him, sure, but that's just a part of a deal with the devil.</p><p>Shizu is going mad, pacing around his room at 4 in the morning and coughing petals into his elbow at random intervals, stepping over a carpet of wet, pale yellow and dripping red every time he breathes, heavy and painful. His throat is sore, burning, because Hiiragi's absence has made it so he can't even get tea down the burning, bleeding mess the leaves had made on the way up. The petals were soft, gentle, frail, but the leaves were lethal and harsh. He's sure he's going to die if he doesn't see Hiiragi soon.</p><p>He knows dying without seeing his golden eyes, seeing him smile again, will haunt him way past death.</p><p>It's four in the morning, and he's kneeling in a pool of his own blood and wincing minutely as the petals burn on the way up, and someone knocks on his door, timid but insistent.</p><p>His heart stops. Stutters. Jumpstarts back to life. He coughs all the way to the bathroom, forces three fingers down his throat even if it makes him cry, so the petals come faster and the blood thins. He cleans, quick and desperate. He washes himself off, brushes his teeth and makes tea to erase the smell of bleach and flowers and sick and blood.</p><p>Hiiragi is standing outside his doorstep, shaking like a leaf and paler than he's ever been, eyes rimmed red and more swollen than Shizu's wrist after all the times he's bitten it. His hair is silver in the light, eyes pale like the moon, and he's a whirlwind of shadows and lights like this, all sharp lines and pain, but he's holding a notebook in his arms like a promise, like a lifeline, so Shizu smiles and holds him just the same way.</p><p>His throat hurts and itches, the tickle now a rash, and his lungs ache with every breath he takes, a raw wound forming by the second, but <em>God</em>, he's such a sucker for pain when it comes from Hiiragi's pretty hands.</p><p>Fates know he'd let those same hands kill him so long as he smiled at him that sweetly.</p><p> </p><p>Yagi Shizusumi is fifteen, and his mouth is filled with flowers, and he's having fun. The vibrations under his feet, the whiplash on his hands, the thundering noise, the cheers. Hiiragi's voice. All of it carries him to a state of being higher than any he's felt before, higher than any he might feel again. He thinks this is it. He's light-headed, sweating buckets, and the shivers are so violent he laughs under his breath, euphoria coaxing the pain from his chest for once.</p><p>The stage lights are hotter than ever, burning him like ultraviolet rays, and yet Shizu's cold, freezing; his bones ache with the ice that has consumed his marrow, permanently preserving his spine in the position best suited to embrace Hiiragi. His blood has frozen his arms, in the way he'll play the drums best. It's freezing all the blood residing in his lungs even now, too, so the last breath he draws in can be Hiiragi's and Hiiragi's only. He's there, up front, where he should always be, shining brighter than any diamond and more breathtaking than any star.</p><p>Always in the shadows, bathed in Hiiragi's merciful light, Shizu's always been a mess of chiaroscuros, fading into the background without the assistance of the sun he's always revolved around. He might as well be the moon, dying every night so Hiiragi can rise, can smile, can bathe the world in his glory, cleaning all the gore and swallowing it whole if he must, so long as those golden eyes keep lighting up like lightbulbs.</p><p>But Hiiragi, Hiiragi's much more than that. He's a burst of colors, the whole color wheel, every single burst of red and yellow and lilac, dripping all vibrancy from every puncture wound on his skin. He's ripped at the edges, places where Mafuyu and Yuki latched on, places they never released before they walked off. They left wounds, took rib bones and souvenirs, but Hiiragi bleeds gold and his bones sparkle like prisms, so in the end, he just looks more beautiful, with scars on his sides and cobalt lights on his cheekbones, lips stretched in a wide smile that looks pink and pretty to Shizu.</p><p>He's singing something so beautiful, so exhilarating, that Shizu thinks he might die. This could be his last night on earth, these could be his last moments, these could be his last memories, and he wouldn't have it any other way.</p><p><em> Yeah</em>, he thinks, as the crowd rages and Hiiragi smiles at him over his shoulder, kind and wide and so bright. <em> Yeah, I could die tonight. </em></p><p>Yagi Shizusumi is fifteen, and he's chewing on flowers that taste of dust and decay and swallowing them down with blood, and he's smiling because he's having fun.</p><p>Around him, the world breathes, and the sun screams.</p><p> </p><p>Gradually, things go back to normal, or as normal as things can be when you're not-so-slowly dying and almost every relationship you've ever had has fallen apart. Hiiragi writes like he's the one that might die tomorrow, sings with the fervor of someone who breathes life, laughs with all the joy of a child and smiles with all the gold in the pot at the end of the rainbow. Shizu bleeds. Chews on petals, spits them out, flushes them down the toilet, buries them, makes them into little mountains under his bed and takes them up to the terrace, watching the wind carry them far, far away, someplace only his remains will ever know. It hurts, in an odd way. He chokes on blood and that, too, is carried away into the sunset. That, too, disappears.</p><p>The flowers, which he's started to puke up whole, do not.</p><p>Life goes on.</p><p>He wakes up covered in yellow every day, teeth caked in red and throat sore. He pukes, throws the petals out, changes the sheets, cleans. Brushes his teeth thrice, once when he wakes up, once when he showers and once before he leaves the house. It's only so effective. He keeps drinking tea, and starts eating less often and just less. He keeps lemon drops in his pocket because they're soothing and they chase away the pungent stench of blood and rot.</p><p>That way, Shizu can convince the world that he isn't a decrepit fixture in it, disease eating away at his lungs like cancer.</p><p>He has good days, where he coughs up petals but not leaves, more spit than blood leaving through cracked lips. On these days, he smiles wider and laughs harder, plays with more enthusiasm and speaks to Hiiragi for longer. Thinks he loves him about a hundred times. Thinks of telling him twice. Hates himself for it maybe once. Goes to sleep content and at ease, knowing he'll have a tomorrow.</p><p>He also has bad days.</p><p>During these days, he wakes up unable to speak without agony for the entirety of first period, and he's roused by the need to spit blood all over the floor. He does, and as the itching turns violent and he coughs, holding onto his bedframe for dear life, leaves and whole flower buds and stray petals splatter onto the mess of yellow and red and green. On the particularly bad ways, stems come with, ripping him to shreds on the way up. He's certain he's dying right that moment, as his chest constricts in a desperate attempt to breathe and survive, and he goes cold and trembling all over. He thinks he wants to see Mafuyu again. He thinks he's selfish, greedy, so he wants to see Hiiragi smile one more time.</p><p>He thinks that now that he's dying he's sort of got the hang of living, and that he wants to learn how to do it for real.</p><p>He doesn't die. He gets his wishes. He cleans up. He does it all over again.</p><p>Mafuyu comes back into their lives.</p><p>Hiiragi has never been happier, but he hasn't cried this much since Yuki died, either.</p><p>Mafuyu on stage is like a holocaust raging on, pandemonium in every note and agony in every breath. It's excruciating.</p><p>Shizu understands.</p><p>And then, they meet him.</p><p>The reason for all the disasters that come their way, and all the good things that come out of those disasters, too.</p><p>A harbinger of destruction with the freedom of a devil and the kindness of an angel.</p><p>Uenoyama Ritsuka, summer incarnate, Mafuyu's boyfriend.</p><p>Shizu is sixteen years old, and he laughs.</p><p>Now <em>that's</em> another cosmic joke.</p><p> </p><p>It's none of his business. It isn't his place. He's projecting and twisting things for his own comfort, complacent in his brain's disaster. The blood loss is finally getting to his brain.</p><p>But.</p><p>Uenoyama looks at Mafuyu like he is the only thing he'd ever beg for, the only thing worth dying for, and Mafuyu smiles at him so sweetly that Shizu almost manages to forget the hesitation behind every step forward he takes. He can almost feign ignorance when he sees how Mafuyu gets lost in the world passing him by, gaze lost somewhere to the side, between Yuki kissing him and Yuki letting him go. It'd be easy to turn a blind eye when he looks at Uenoyama so fondly, touches him so gently. It's not his place, he begins to decide, and begins to detach, and begins to accept, because <em>it's not his place</em>, but—</p><p>But. But Uenoyama reaches for Mafuyu's hand and stops short, fingers twitching with a longing Shizu knows too well, before he stuffs his hand firmly in his pocket and blinks away the look of yearning so strong it was nothing but pain. Shizusumi knows that look, knows that pain, knows the melancholy of wanting something not his to take. He knows the resignation in that face, the defeat in that mouth, and he knows the love tearing him apart from the inside out much more than he knows his own hands.</p><p>It's so easy to start loving someone without realizing the lethality of them not loving you back in the same capacity. Shizu coughs into his elbow and carefully tucks yellow petals into his back pocket, and thinks that if the flowers don't kill him, the longing and the desperation will.</p><p>But he'll die, and soon, too. The last leg of it is starting already. Flowers attached to the stems. Lack of appetite. Drowsiness. Anemia. Allergies. Fainting spells. Death.</p><p>It's a wonderfully clear-cut cycle, which is laughable, because there's nothing clear cut about falling in love with your best friend who may or may not be in love with your dead childhood friend who was dating <em> his </em>best friend.</p><p>There's certainly nothing clear cut about Hiiragi and Uenoyama Ritsuka playing side by side, black and white, blue and golden, black and blond, with those fierce expressions of elation that Shizu hasn't felt in so, <em> so </em>long.</p><p>There's something magnetic in them, something in azure depths that grow more troubled and more piercing by the day, that says, <em> you could love him. </em></p><p><em> He loves someone else, </em> he says back. <em> And he's loved in return.</em></p><p>Mafuyu and Uenoyama start falling apart, and what weak concrete that was, if just a few tugs dismantle the whole castle.</p><p><em> Is he? </em>The voice says, the same that whispers of biting thighs and pressing bruises into hips and claiming lips and defiling Hiiragi, and Shizusumi swallows.</p><p>This is all laughable.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed it! Leave a comment and a kudos if you can :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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